Enterprise headless CMS for large businesses

When it comes to innovation, speed, and scale, a lot is at stake for enterprise-level companies — financially, logistically, and, perhaps most important, in reputation.

That’s why they must evaluate whether an enterprise headless content management system (CMS) software solution is right for them. An enterprise headless CMS is specifically built to manage and efficiently deliver vast amounts of content across multiple digital channels and platforms.

As its name implies, an enterprise headless CMS is a step above traditional headless content management systems and is significantly more capable than monolithic systems.

Most enterprise-level businesses don’t struggle to produce enough content — they struggle to manage it productively.

This is why enterprise businesses require reliable personalized, omnichannel content delivery over multiple digital touchpoints. Delivery can come through intense ad campaigns and traffic spikes. For businesses where this is common, CMS reliability is paramount.

A traditional system, such as WordPress or Drupal, is suitable for small to medium organizations, but large businesses have large needs.

As opposed to a traditional CMS, in a headless CMS setup, the content authoring experience is separated from the software development experience. The back end, separated from the front-end presentation layer, is responsible for content creation, organization, and management.

The architecture provides a user-friendly interface for content editors to create and manage content, including text, images, videos, and other multimedia assets.

Even though they’re decoupled, they’re bonded by an Application Programming Interface (API) that sends the data to various digital touchpoints, such as websites, mobile apps, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, or any other channel where content needs to be displayed.

API-first and modern tools allow these connections into existing enterprise ecosystems in the back-end system. They fully leverage the power of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and content management systems (CMS).

The decoupling also allows organizations to deliver dynamic content with real-time updates to multiple channels without being restricted by the limitations of a monolithic CMS platform. Ideally, they should complement each other.

The system’s back end does the heavy lifting, updating multiple and different systems when businesses market a product. For developers, whether they are using Javascript libraries or any other option, this enables flexibility in design and user experience and the ability to adapt to evolving technology trends, frameworks, and changing customer expectations.

With separate ends working together, a headless ecommerce setup becomes an omnichannel experience. Businesses’ marketing and merchandising teams can create fully customized, branded, customer-facing digital storefronts and deliver experiences across channels without disturbing the back-end infrastructure. The architecture provides a user-friendly interface for content editors to create and manage content, including text, images, videos, and other multimedia assets.

Even though they’re decoupled, they’re bonded by an Application Programming Interface (API) that sends the data to various digital touchpoints, such as websites, mobile apps, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, or any other channel where content needs to be displayed.

API-first and modern tools allow these connections into existing enterprise ecosystems in the back-end system. They fully leverage the power of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and content management systems (CMS).

The decoupling also allows organizations to deliver dynamic content with real-time updates to multiple channels without being restricted by the limitations of a monolithic CMS platform. Ideally, they should complement each other.

The system’s back end does the heavy lifting, updating multiple and different systems when businesses market a product. For developers, whether they are using Javascript libraries or any other option, this enables flexibility in design and user experience and the ability to adapt to evolving technology trends, frameworks, and changing customer expectations.

With separate ends working together, a headless ecommerce setup becomes an omnichannel experience. Businesses’ marketing and merchandising teams can create fully customized, branded, customer-facing digital storefronts and deliver experiences across channels without disturbing the back-end infrastructure.

Marketing managers in large organizations have numerous angles to consider when evaluating an enterprise-level CMS:

• How does your current CMS compare to what’s on the market?
• How much longer can your business live with this existing functionality?
• Is your IT team spending excessive time and resources on security patching and bug fixing?
• If you turn to something different, how can you be sure it will be worth it?

Businesses shopping for enterprise headless CMS solutions should keep several factors in mind. Foremost, they should implement information governance. Data breaches, privacy regulations, and industry compliance measures are becoming more common, and for good reasons. Enterprise CMS platforms should provide information governance and highly customizable permission settings to maintain security and future-proof your tech stack, offering single sign-on (SSO) and two-factor authentication options.

Enterprise businesses also should investigate whether a CMS solution requires extensive setup and investment in building new sites. They should ensure it’s not overwhelming for new and inexperienced users and lacks new iterations. They must check the solution’s learning curve and whether the APIs are configurable.

An effective enterprise CMS keeps content organized and permissions flexible so contractors and staff from other departments can access, optimize, and publish the content they need whenever and wherever they need.

They also should investigate whether a CMS solution has adequate support. An enterprise CMS should have features and ready-made integrations to boost search-engine presence, such as page titles, meta descriptions, optimized URL structures, alt text for images, breadcrumb navigation, XML sitemaps, and redirect capabilities.

An enterprise-grade CMS should have seven key features:

1. Data migration: When planning to migrate content from the old CMS to the new headless CMS, you should consider the difficulty and time it takes to perform various tasks like converting data formats, mapping fields, and handling any potential data loss or discrepancies, as well as flexible content models, and the ability to batch upload large bulks of content into the CMS.
2. Omnichannel content distribution: A CMS that can handle more than just content to a single, static website is essential on an enterprise scale.
3. Mobile optimization: In stats compiled by Hubspot, at the end of 2021, 54.4% of all global website traffic was generated on mobile devices.
4. Multi-language capabilities: We live in a global marketplace. Brands that operate in multiple countries need translation and localization tools to ensure the right content is delivered in the right context.
5. Automation through integration: An enterprise CMS processes a vast amount of digital content, so integration with AI-enabled tools and other content platforms can manage your content lifecycle and reuse data depending on the requirements.
6. Advanced content management settings: Not everyone has to be at the wheel of an enterprise CMS. Make sure the system has access controls, approval workflows, versioning, and more, through a single sign-on (SSO), not just for content creators but other teams too.
7. SLA and support: Enterprise CMS should provide a comprehensive SLA (service-level agreement) that will cover uptime, response times, support availability, and performance.

According to a recent State of Commerce report from Salesforce, 77% of organizations that use headless architecture say it gives them greater scalability and extensibility.

The approach is also becoming a crucial component of the new generation of digital experience platforms (DXPs). DXPs go significantly beyond web content management to create rich, engaging customer experiences for audiences across many channels. For large businesses, an enterprise headless CMS is a natural progression in ecommerce.

To learn more about Sitecore XM Cloud, our answer for enterprises looking to move to an enterprise-level headless CMS, take a look at the product features here and then request a demo call to speak with one of our experts.